Meals to enjoy from your freezer [antikvár]

IntroductionIn response to numerous requests, the publishers have decided to reproduce Home Guide to Deep Freezing as two paper-back volumes.The first volume, under the title All About Home Freezing, deals with choosing, buying and filling a freezer. This second volume, which has been considerably expanded, contains advice on menu-planning and many recipes for appetising meals from the freezer.There are three advantages which, when you invest in a freezer, you will soon discover.Firstly, you will be able to buy commercially frozen food and fresh meat in bulk at considerably reduced prices and save a substantial sum month by month towards the initial cost of the freezer. Deliveries made straight to your door by refrigerated van will make frequent sho jping expeditions a thing of the past, saving your money, time and energy.Secondly, freezing your own garden produce, or fresh fruit and vegetables you can buy cheaply at certain times of the year, will represent another economy. You will find that you always have plenty of food in stock and your first reaction when planning meals for the day soon tends to be - "What is in my freezer?" rather than - "What must I buy today?" But there is a further bonus in time and money saved by the use of the freezer for preserving home-cooked dishes.The average housewife spends more time each day cooking than in any other task. Breakfast, packed meals, elevenses, lunch, tea, dinner, suppers and snacks - there seems no end to the number of meals to be prepared each day and no escape from the kitchen for the harassed housewife. Cooking always seems to coincide with other important domestic chores, just when you are busiest - getting the children off to school, helping them with their homework, or putting the little ones to bed! Or if you are a working wife, it seems to swallow up all your spare time.This is where the freezer can help you to plan and cook ahead. A great deal of time can be saved in repetitive preparation tasks bycooking in much larger quantities and freezing a number of meals for future use, as well as having one ready to wiit at once. You can do most of your cooking at the time of day when you are free to give your whole attention to it. Many housewives seem to find that this is during the early afternoon, by the way, but working wives often prefer to have a big cooking spree over the weekend.In fact, by partly stocking your freezer with cooked dishes which will include precooked sauces and prepared items such as uncooked pastry and biscuit dough, you can alter the entire pattern of catering for the family to reduce the hard work involved to an absolute minimum.You will find chain cooking, which is fully described in Chapter Two, is another fascinating adventure in cooking for a freezer owner.It is such a boon to have stocks of your own home-made sauces always available, to dress up a pasta dish or transform left-overs into a creamy ragout. Just see how many ready-to-cook and fully prepared dishes you can chain-cook with chicken, for example. One cake-making session each month will keep the family well supplied with delicious fresh cakes, even elaborate iced ones. And one sandwich-making session will cover all demands for packed meals, even rations for the children's friends who drop in to play and stay over tea-time.It is a good idea to make up packs of assorted sandwiches for freezing. If someone has a special preference or dislike, write his name on packs which contain no peanut butter, or plenty of sardine spread, according to individual taste. Sandwiches take about 2| hours to thaw, which means that they're usually just ready for eating by the time they're needed. If needed more quickly, spread them on a plate to thaw.You will soon become accustomed to the convenience of serving commercially frozen foods more often because buying them in bulk is more economical. You may then feel like experimenting to find new, adventurous ways of serving them.3